


The Humperdinck Variation

by Thimblerig



Category: Princess Bride (1987), The Princess Bride - William Goldman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Gen, Literary Agent Hypothesis, Remix
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-18 03:38:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 11,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14204217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: Right. Okay. So my Very Young Niece watchedThe Princess Bridefor the first time last week. How young? Very young. And after it’s over she says, “That was alright, I guess. But where’s the version where Humperdinck is the hero?” What can I say, she knows what she likes. (My fanficcer heart is so very proud.) As an older relative of Very Young Niece, whatever my personal feelings on Humperdinck, there is only one reasonable thing to say...





	1. Preamble

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DaisyNinjaGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaisyNinjaGirl/gifts).



#  **The Humperdinck Variation**

## transl. and abr. from “The Nice and Accurate History, and Lamentable Death, of Humperdinck the Good, Crowned Prince of Florin”

[[Right. Okay. So my Very Young Niece watched _The Princess Bride_ for the first time last week. How young? Very young. And after it’s over she says, “That was alright, I guess. But where’s the version where Humperdinck is the hero?” What can I say, she knows what she likes. (My fanficcer heart is so very proud.) As an older relative of Very Young Niece, whatever my personal feelings on Humperdinck, there is only one reasonable thing to say.  
  
So I go up into the attic and shove a few things around, dust everywhere, cats having a ball watching, and finally, at the bottom of a cardboard box that still smells of apples, under some old university papers, I found my copy of _The Nice and Accurate History, and Lamentable Death, of Humperdinck the Good, Crowned Prince of Florin._ I picked it up in a book sale. But turns out only the cover is in English, everything inside is in Florinese, which I am shaky on, and what’s more it uses Old Florin Orthography. There’re finials, and serifs, there’s that letter the Florinese stole from Russia that’s all eyes. Just, yeah, I had exams so I put it away for later and I never got back to it. But! For family!  
  
I’ll be working through the text - simplifying for VYN - but also, my Florinese remains very shaky, so if you can think of a better translation, or have sighted the text yourself, feel free to chip in with the Good Bits you want me to keep in there.  
  
Just, er, _don’t_ tell the Morgenstern Estate about what I’m doing, they’re weird about even Goldman’s licensed version of _Bride_ and I’m unclear on the provenance of _Lamentable Death._ So if anybody asks, this is _fanfic,_ *waves spooky fingers* _faaaaaaan fiiiiiiic.]]_  
  
  
  
Humperdinck loved only twice in his life, and that fiercely. He was a man like a hawk, with a sharp nose and pale, remote eyes. To have his attention was to see a falcon above you, watching. In action he was swift, like a falcon stooping. And he loved.   
  
  
  
  
[[Hang on, the VYN probably only wants the part that gets into the movie, not all this prequel biography stuff.  
  
I will start over. Back soon.]]


	2. The Hunter

[[I’m skipping a couple of chapters. There’s a lot of begats and such-and-such built the Florin Castle on the River Florin because etc. etc. and I’m sure it’s got a lot of sociocultural interest, but a VYN won’t want to hear it. She might like the chapter that deals with Humperdinck’s feelings about hats, but I swear, half the vocabulary translates to ‘bonnet’ in my dictionary. Back to the love story!]]  
  
  
Humperdinck loved to go hunting. He could track a falcon on a cloudy day; he could run with the long-legged deer in the woods. He loved to stalk close enough to a mother-tiger in the rocks and watch as she washed her young cubs, pinning them with one great paw and cleaning behind their ears.  
  
He loved animals so much that he even built Florin’s first zoo - when he found a bird with a broken wing or a bear with a sore foot, he would take them home and give them a shelter and lots of food so that they could get better, and he put safe walkways in the zoo so the people of Florin could see what wild things looked like when they were happy.  
  
One day he was travelling alone in the hills of Florin, as close as he could be to the sky, when from a distance he saw a small cow-farm, and working on the farm was the most beautiful woman in the world. Her name was Buttercup. Humperdinck’s mother had told him once that hearts were like glass because they were clear and strong and they held sunlight. He realised, when he saw Buttercup, that hearts were also like glass because they could break. As soon as he saw her his heart had a little crack in it, right _there._  
  
So he walked down to the farm to say Hello. And Buttercup looked up from the bucket she was carrying and said Hello right back, because she was a polite girl.  
  
Then, Humperdinck said: ”Buttercup, you are very beautiful. Your hair is the colour of autumn wheat; your skin is the colour of winter milk. I am in love with you. Will you marry me?”  
  
“No,” she said.  
  
“Nobody ever tells me ‘no’,” said Humperdinck in surprise. (They didn’t. He was the prince, and people loved him, and they usually gave him what he wanted.)  
  
“Get used to it,” Buttercup said, and smiled.  
  
When she smiled his heart broke again, into little pieces this time. “Alright,” he said. And by ‘alright,’ he meant, ‘as you wish,’ and by ‘as you wish,’ he meant, ‘I love you.’ “May I ask you again, next year?”  
  
“If you like,” she said. “I don’t really care.”  
  
Humperdinck returned to Buttercup’s farm with the spring rain. He held an umbrella over her head as she tied young beanstalks to stakes in her cottage garden. “If you marry me,” he said, “I will hold an umbrella over you for always and always. Will you marry me?”  
  
“No,” said Buttercup. “I will not marry you because I do not love you. I cannot love you. I will never love again.”  
  
Her heart was a secret garden and the wall was high. 

“Alright,” said Humperdinck, “may I ask you again next year?”

“If you like,” said Buttercup, “but I'll just say no.”  
  
“I'll manage,” said Humperdinck.  
  
  
  
[[This is where the first illustration comes, in my edition. There’s a bit of tissue between the text and a woodcut print. Up around the sides are mountains and trees and Prince Humperdinck in hunting dress with his cloak draped all aesthetic-like. In the centre all small is the little farmhouse and Buttercup is drawing water from the well. Her sleeves are rolled up and her hair is in two braids; her face is very serious because she doesn’t want to spill the water.]]


	3. The Farmgirl

[[@MrsWestley4Eva - no, I don’t know whether _Lamentable Death_ was written before or after _Bride,_ on account of the date on the frontispiece is bang in the middle of the Calendar Reformation, so it could be Julian, Gregorian, or French Decimal, _or_ Prime Florin (counting from the time the unicorn cracked the rock from which springs the River Florin), _or also_ Prime Florin (counting from the time King Florizel planted the first acorn that would become the great forest), and none of these calendrical systems mark themselves out specially, you were Just Supposed To Know. And I don’t know, because I didn’t just walk into the book store and open up the fresh book and go, ‘Hey, _Lamentable Death_ thinks it’s in the same year I think I’m in, sweet!’ Life is uncertainty, Highness.]]  
  
  
The next year, before Humperdinck asked Buttercup to marry him, he asked his Aunty Valerie for advice.  
  
  
  
[[There’s a whole section here on Valerie, how she grew up in the north of Florin and Miracle Max was her second husband and she was only a potion-ladler when she got married but she kept taking classes at Night School and got her Witch Certification, maybe late but first class. And when Miracle Max was called to the Palace on account of the King and Queen were worried about Baby Humperdinck’s _bad heart,_ she kept coating his pills with her chocolate and it _made everything better._ So there’s that. Honestly, Valerie sounds awesome, but I don’t want to raise VYN’s expectations re: chocolate, so I’m soft-pedalling this a bit. Needless to say, even when the King and Max were quarrelling, the Queen and Valerie, they were solid. Where was I?]]  
  
  
Humperdinck’s Aunty Valerie was a sensible woman, and what she said was, “My Boy, next time you meet the love of your life, maybe talk to her before asking the Big Question. Take her for a nice walk among the flowers, go out for hot chocolate, maybe talk about how you both like cats, that sort of thing.”   
  
So this time Humperdinck arrived at Buttercup’s farm with a big wicker basket full of yummy things to eat, and he invited her on a picnic. There were strawberries, and apples, and spicy buns, and mutton-lettuce-tomato sandwiches with the mutton nice and lean, and a thermos of hot chocolate. And after they had enjoyed a very pleasant lunch up in a high meadow with the flowers blooming, Humperdinck asked Buttercup why she couldn’t love again.  
  
“Prince Humperdinck,” said Buttercup, “once upon a time I didn’t know anything and I was happy. I had two hobbies. One was riding my horse all over and about, and my other hobby was tormenting the farmboy. ‘Farmboy,’ I’d say, very haughty, ‘fetch a pail of water. Farmboy, polish my saddle: I want to see my face in it by morning.’ Every time I said these things, he only answered, ‘As you wish.’ Then one day, I realised that when I told him to do something, I meant, ‘I want you to be near me; I want you to think about me.’ And when he said, ‘As you wish,’ what he meant was, ‘I love you.’  
  
“Once we started using our words, the conversation got easier. Farmboy’s name was Westley, and his eyes were the colour of a sea before the storm, and his shoulders were broad to carry great burdens, and his hands were very gentle.  
  
“We wanted to get married, but Westley was very poor, and my parents’ farm had a mortgage, and we just didn’t have enough money to get married all proper. So Westley decided to go overseas to make his fortune. Then he would come back, and we would get married, and live happily ever after.  
  
“But, Humperdinck, a little while later, word came back that Westley’s ship had been taken by the Dread Pirate Roberts. Everybody knows that the Dread Pirate Roberts never takes any prisoners. So I knew my Westley was dead.  
  
“I died that day. I shut myself into my room for a very long time. When I came out, I knew that I could never love again. I’m not sure if I can ever be happy. And that is why I cannot marry you, Humperdinck.”  
  
Buttercup smiled at the Prince, small and sweet and sad, and she ate the last strawberry in the basket.  
  
Humperdinck thought for a little while. Then he said, “Buttercup, even if you cannot love, maybe you can be happy. And if you cannot be happy, maybe you can be useful. And if you can be none of these things, you will still have a friend at your side. And that is something.”  
  
Buttercup looked at him a long time, then she said, “Yes, Humperdinck, that is something.”  
  
Humperdinck held out his big hand. “Buttercup, will you marry me?”  
  
Buttercup covered his hand with her own little one. “Yes, Humperdinck, I will.”


	4. The Villains

[[There’s a whole bit here where Buttercup has to go to the Royal Academy to learn princessing things on account of, she was a farm girl and didn’t have the right skill sets. You can see pictures of it pretty easy, just google “Florin Royal Academy”, and of course most of the hits for “traditional Florinese mosaic” will get you images for the big dome - the one with all the sort-of abstract green tree-like patterns along the border and then you look up and there’s the unicorn again, with the crack in the rock and all those gorgeous blues as the river spirals out. Yeah, you know the one I mean, it’s from the Florin Royal Academy. (Fanfic is educational!) So B learns lots of princess skills - not just how to dress nice and be pleasant to visiting dignitaries, but geography and economics and household management for castles and law and a bit of church doctrine and, you know, stuff. And she gets really tired because some of it is hard and there’s a lot to learn but Humperdinck is really nice and tells her she can do it and he believes in her etc. etc. The Dreaded Training Montage.]]

 

The preparations for getting married were many and complicated. But in time, three months before the party for the 500th anniversary of Florin becoming a country, Prince Humperdinck stood on the walls of his castle and announced to everyone that he was marrying a woman of the people. Then a door at the bottom of the wall opened and Princess Buttercup walked out, in a beautiful dress and wearing a little crown, and everyone cheered.

Humperdinck and Buttercup were both happy and anxious, because the wedding would be happening soon and it would change things in their lives. Buttercup did not truly love Humperdinck, but she liked him a lot and she thought they could build a good life together. Humperdinck loved Buttercup a little more every day; his heart was all splintered glass, but the sun shone through it and made rainbows.

But little did he know, his closest advisor and friend, Count Rugen, was planning to do bad things to him and his princess bride.

On the very same day that Humperdinck and Buttercup announced their engagement, Count Rugen went to the Thieves’ Quarter to talk to Vizzini the Sicilian and they made a wicked plan.

Vizzini was a small man. I don't mean in height, though his bones were short. I mean in his heart. He was angry, because people did not like him; he was frustrated, because the world did not give him what he wanted. He made himself feel taller by standing on people's fingers. When Rugen asked him to kidnap Princess Buttercup, he laughed: “Ah ha ha, consider it done.” Then Vizzini made up a very cunning plan, and he summoned his two helpers.

The biggest of Vizzini’s helpers was a giant, Fezzik. Fezzik was from Turkey and he was big, so big that he had to duck in every doorway, so big that he could uproot an oak tree and use it as a club, so big that people got scared just looking at him. Fezzik had a heart as big as the rest of him, but mostly the only ones that didn’t run away in fear were kittens and small girls, who knew what a kind heart he had. Mostly Vizzini only wanted him because he was big and strong. He didn’t care that Fezzik liked poetry, and a lot of the time he called Fezzik stupid. 

Vizzini’s other helper was Iniga Montoya, a swordswoman from Spain. She was long and lean and she wore brown leather because it didn’t show the dirt or the blood. Two scars ran down her cheeks, and she had been travelling for many years, looking for the man who had murdered her father. There were only two things bright about her - her eyes, which caught all the light of the moon and the stars, and the sword she carried on her hip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // This is actually a perfectly respectable canon divergence AU, in that according to supplementary materials in the 25th Anniversary of the book, what got Miracle Max fired was his failure to magic Baby Prince Humperdinck out of being a monster. (Also, that Valerie's chocolate supercharged Max's miracles.) So... What If the miracle worked etc. etc.
> 
> // As to "Iniga", well, if Goldman didn't want people genderbending his characters, he could have put in more than one female character with narrative weight. Buddy.


	5. The Kidnap

[[Good news! My _Illustrated Dictionary of Florinese Headgear: Mid-14th Century to 2nd Reformation_ by Mme Karloff Goldblum just came in the mail and I can now tell you that before the windstorm that foiled the Three Villains’ first kidnapping attempt Vizzini was wearing a hat of soft materials gathered into a floppy brim, like a Tudor flat-cap, in ‘early autumn’ colours which in Florinese terms means lots of greens and reds mixed together in contrast; Iniga had a neat little felted woollen beret of (you guessed it) brown; and Fezzik was crowned with a brimless, cylindrical cap with a flat top and a, hang on - a detachable tassel - which probably looked like… okay Fezzik was wearing a fez because the writer was a dick. Moving on.]]  


The day after the engagement was announced, Princess Buttercup went riding.

Humperdinck stood on the wall and waved as she rode out of sight. He wasn’t worried, because he knew that Buttercup needed quiet time every now and then, and that she loved her horse Pferd, and to see new places, and to go very fast.

But the day rolled on, and the sun climbed high, and she did not return.

At noon, when the light was very bright, the groom that followed a little behind Buttercup came back, shame-faced, and told Humperdinck that he had lost the Princess in the woods when a sudden windstorm came and blew all the leaves around and about so that he could not see her. Humperdinck told the groom not to worry, because Buttercup was a very good rider.

In the middle of the afternoon a student witch who had been gathering toadstools in the woods came to see Humperdinck all in a rush. “I saw the Princess go down a forest track,” she said, “all bright with her pearl-sewn cap and her red dress flowing, and I saw three Circus Performers go down the track after her, one small, one big, and one in-between, and Your Highness, not one of them came back.”

“She probably took the long way around,” Humperdinck told the witch. He smiled at her, to ease her fears, but privately he began to worry. When he had shown the young witch to the door (and offered her some toadstools from the castle herb-garden), he called his friend and advisor, Count Rugen, to summon horses and riders to go look for her. Count Rugen neatened the points of his moustache and smiled. “That won’t be a problem,” he said.

Near evening, Humperdinck’s party came through the woods. They went up and down and around-about, as Humperdinck followed the tracks of Buttercup’s horse Pferd. And then, in a little clearing, Humperdinck found scuffs in the leaves where three people had stopped, and taken Buttercup off the horse, and the horse had run away. “We have to follow them!” Humperdinck cried.

As quickly as they hurried, it was night time when Humperdinck and his riders reached the strait of water that separated Florin and Guilder. A fisherman called out to them from his boat - “I saw them take the Princess!” he cried. “Three Circus Performers put her on a ship and sailed off to Guilder. Then a Man in Black leaped into my sister’s fishing boat and sailed after them. Prince Humperdinck, they kidnapped our Princess. And they’re taking her into eel-infested waters!!”


	6. Crossing the Strait (1)

[[There is another picture, here, of a little square-rigged cog pulling away from a river-mouth into the open water. Fezzik is holding the unconscious Princess Buttercup in his arms - you can see in the lines of how he’s drawn that he’s being very careful with her. Iniga is working the ropes of the cog all lanky and gangly-like. (Am just going to pause for a moment to admire the tight leather pants. Clearly a masterful tailor at work there.) Vizzini is up at the stern, gazing out like an explorer into the setting sun. And he. is. furious.]]

  

For a long time after they had put her on the little ship, Princess Buttercup lay quietly on the deck. The giant, Fezzik, had touched her neck in a wrestling move called the Alamein Nerve Pinch, which generally caused instant unconsciousness. Buttercup had spent several years at Princess School learning to resist the Alamein Nerve Pinch, so she woke up quite soon. Another thing she had learned at Princess School was that, in bad situations, sometimes it's best to be quiet and hidden like a mouse; or tricky and clever like a fox; or fast and sudden as a rabbit; or fierce like a wolf. Right now Buttercup was quiet like a mouse, pretending to be asleep and gathering information before she moved.

And so she heard when the little angry man, Vizzini, told his helpers that he meant to murder Buttercup and leave her body to start a war between Florin and Guilder. This wasn’t good for anybody.

  

[[This is where _Lamentable Death_ uses the device of Buttercup thinking through the issues to dive into an account of the history of political, military, and trade relations between Florin and Guilder and most of it, I’m sorry to say, is very dry. Maybe a few sparks of interest in the currency debates - Dragoons for St Valerie and St Osgyth and all that - but still over the head of VYN. When she’s a bit older I’ll write it all out proper. Right now, tl;dr, a war wasn’t good for anybody.]]

 

If only, thought Buttercup, she had ridden quickly away from the Circus Performers when she had the chance. But she was here now, and trapped, and there was no point in wasting time on might-have-beens. Listening, she realised that only Vizzini was happy about killing her. The giant, Fezzik, and the swordswoman, Iniga, were reluctant to go that far.

“I just don’t think it’s right, killing an innocent girl,” said Fezzik.

Buttercup did not think it was right, either.

Vizzini flustered and fumed. “Am I going mad or did the work ‘think’ escape your lips, you hippopotamic landmass?”

Buttercup did not think that was kind to say. It isn’t useful to call someone stupid, and hurts their feelings.

“I agree with Fezzik,” said the swordswoman in a breathy Castilian accent.

And Vizzini whirled upon Iniga. He fumed, he flabberghasted, he flibbertigibbeted. “Oh, the sot has spoken,” he snarled, soft as the susurration of a snake. “What happens to her is not truly your concern. I will kill her.” His voice rose. “And remember this,” he said to Iniga, “never forget this. When I found you, you were too drunk to buy brandy.” Iniga stared at him, lean and silent as a sword blade. Vizzini fell back a step and turned to Fezzik. “And you - friendless, brainless, helpless - do you want me to send you back to where you were, unemployed, in Greenland??”

Fezzik backed away from Vizzini. He was not afraid of spiders, or heights, or snarling wolves. But being alone? That terrified him.

As the angry little man turned away to pilot the ship, Fezzik picked up Buttercup. He thought she was still asleep and he did not want her to get trampled on. Buttercup let her eyelids flicker, as if she was only just waking up, and she patted him on the shoulder in a friendly way, and as she did so, she felt Fezzik’s arms relax, just a little bit.

Not long after that, Iniga finished setting the sails on the ship. She stepped up beside Fezzik and Buttercup. “That Vizzini, he surely likes to… fuss,” she said.

This was a game that Fezzik and Iniga liked to play, rhyming things. Fezzik thought a bit, and said, “And then he likes to… scream at us.” 

The two helpers smiled at each other. “Oh, you’ve a great gift for rhyme,” said Iniga.

“Some of the time,” said Fezzik.

“Probably he means no… harm,” said Iniga.

“Speak for yourself, I’m quite alarmed,” said Buttercup, opening her eyes properly. She looked at Iniga. Iniga looked back at Buttercup.

“That’s fair,” said Iniga.

“Would you like a chair?” asked Fezzik.

 

[[Argh, it’s killing me, but I can’t work out how to get the triple pun with the apple and the bowsprit in here - my Florinese just isn’t good enough and there are like, connotations. I’m so sorry. Needless to say, Fezzik and Iniga and Buttercup traded some clever rhymes and word-games back and forth to pass the time, kinda congenial in the face of impending doom AND THEN -]]

 

"Stop talking!" screamed Vizzini. "The princess is not people!"


	7. Crossing the Strait 2

[[Content Warning: Nobody actually dies in this chapter but there’s a close call, fair warning. Screaming eels - I’m not going to describe them in detail, but sorta like a lamprey only worse _don’t google that._ Improvised headgear.]]

 

The little ship sailed on through the night, through a sea so still and silent that it reflected the stars above, as if diamonds lay in the waters. Iniga stayed in the back, leaning on the rail and looking behind them. Fezzik sat in the middle. Vizzini continued to steer.

“Despite what you think,” said Buttercup, “you will be caught. And when you are, the Prince will see you hanged.

“Of all the necks on this boat, Highness,” answered Vizzini, “the one you should be worried about is your own.”

Fezzik shifted uncomfortably at those words, and the whole ship wobbled. Iniga kept looking behind them. “Are you sure nobody is following us?” she said.

“It would be absolutely, totally, and in all other ways inconceivable,” said Vizzini. “No-one in Guilder knows what we have done, and no-one from Florin could possibly have caught up with us.”

“It’s just, I think I see someone following us…” said Iniga.

“Inconceivable!” said Vizzini, but all the same, he walked to the back of the boat and looked. Sure enough, there was the faint shape of a sailboat, black against the black of the night sky.

“That is probably just a fishing boat,” said Vizzini, trying to explain. “Come for a cruise on… eel-infested waters…” He was just concocting an extremely convincing explanation when he was very rudely interrupted by the princess jumping overboard.

Buttercup was a strong swimmer because she had paid attention in swimming classes, but even so, it was very dark and very cold in the water, and she could hear a faint, high-pitched sound, like a whine or a distant scream.

“After her!” screamed Vizzini.

Iniga shrugged. “I don’t swim. You initialed that on my contract, remember?”

Fezzik said sadly, “I only dog paddle.”

“Do you know what that sound is?” Vezzik called out to Buttercup. “That is from the Shrieking Eels. They always get louder when they’re about to feed.”

Buttercup said nothing as she swam through the cold water. Then, something brushed against her leg, something strong and sinewy. And Buttercup screamed a little, because she was very frightened. She tried to hold still in the water, hoping that it would get bored and go away, but then she started to sink. The giant eel in the water twisted its long snakey body around her and started to tighten, and then its mouth opened with all its pointy teeth, and it _shrieked..._

  

[[Sorry, I need a bit of a break here. This scene is really unnerving in the original Florinese and going through it over and over is seriously giving me the willies. Off for a cup of tea and some stem-ginger cake.

*

Right, back. Please to excuse the obvious clipping that follows.]]

 

Suddenly! An enormous hand reached out and punched the eel in the snoot! It was Fezzik, clinging to the side of the boat so he could lean out far enough to help Buttercup! He grabbed the collar of her dress and lifted her out of the water like a half-drowned kitten to put her safely back in the ship. (This is where Iniga pulled on the ropes of the big sail, because the ship got very unbalanced when Fezzik moved.) Buttercup lay face down on the deck in her soggy dress and shivered.

After a while she sat up.

“I suppose you think you’re brave?” asked Vizzini.

“Only compared to some,” answered Buttercup.

She was still shivering. This is when Iniga wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, so that she would be a little warmer, and Fezzik curled his big warm hand over the top of her head until she stopped shivering.

Vizzini saw how kind Iniga and Fezzik were to Buttercup, and he did not like it all.

Iniga looked back over the stern. “Look!” she cried, pointing at the fishing boat. “The ship is gaining on us! (I wonder if he is using the same wind we are using?)”

“It’s too late,” roared Vizzini in triumph. He pointed ahead, into the dawn. “We have reached the Cliffs of Insanity!”


	8. Humperdinck Follows The Trail

Later that day, Prince Humperdinck’s caravel

 

[[A caravel is a kind of ship. It’s got a similar shape to a cog but, instead of a square-rigged sail on a single mast, it usually has two or more masts that are lateen-rigged with triangular sails. (Gaff-rigging splits the difference. Go on, ask me about gaff-rigging…)]]

 

 put in to a tiny cove beneath the towering, ominous, lofty Cliffs of Insanity.

Two small ships drifted nearby, abandoned, and Humperdinck could see where a very long, very strong rope had been cut and fallen in a heap like a tangle of snakes on the sand. He could see tiny chips in the Cliffs above, where a skilled climber had made their own handholds. Humperdinck knew that he could not follow that way.

“Sail to the North,” he told his advisor, Count Rugen. “There is a way up a few hours that way, and we can pick up their trail from there.”

Count Rugen smiled. “That shouldn’t be a problem,” he said.

But sailing North took them into dangerous shoals where the ship caught on sandbanks and baby Shrieking Eels swarmed in bunches. It was not until late afternoon that Humperdinck made it up a winding trail to the top of the Cliffs of Insanity and a ruined tower.

Moving softly on the loose earth, Humperdinck followed the footprints back and forth. He was a skilled hunter - he could track a falcon on a cloudy day - and his eyes missed nothing of the footprints.

“There was a swordfight here,” he told Count Rugen. “They were both masters, and they were both left-handed. But… no,” he said thoughtfully, as he reached the edge of the cliff, “one of them switched hands.”

Count Rugen said nothing. He also was a master of swordplay, but there was only one part of fighting that he really enjoyed. It was drawing blood.

Humperdinck followed the tracks back, up the steps of a tower, where he realised that the other had switched hands. “The two of them were playing, I think.” And he said, because the tracks on the ground were like an open book to him, “One was a man, and the other a woman. She was tall. They stopped to talk here. The man ran off. The woman was dark-haired, and wore leather.

“How do you know that?” asked Count Rugen. 

“Because she is right there!” said Humperdinck.

It was true. Hidden by a pile of rubble, Iniga Montoya sat tied to a barren tree. She was dusty, and brown, and there was a big lump on her head where she had been hit. It was still daytime, just, so her eyes did not catch the light of the moon and stars. In fact, there was only one thing bright about her, and that was the sword on the ground, which she was trying to reach with her toes.

Humperdinck sent Count Rugen to help the rest of his riders get to the top of the Cliffs. Then he knelt by Iniga and asked, politely, “Excuse me. Did you try to steal Princess Buttercup?” (He believed in being polite.)

“I helped steal Princess Buttercup,” Iniga answered. She also believed in being polite. “It was the plan of Vizzini the Sicilian. I was his helper, me.” She added regretfully, “I thought he only meant to kidnap her for the ransom.” (A ransom is where you take something valuable from someone and then sell it back.) “But Vizzini, he is going to kill her. He went that-away,” she said, nodding her head.

“You are being very helpful,” said Humperdinck.

Iniga shrugged. “I don’t mind stealing from bad people so much.”

“Because they are bad?”

“Because they have money.” Iniga shrugged again. “I am on a _Quest of Revenge_ and I have expenses. And also because they are bad.” She looked away, down the track where Vizzini and Fezzik had taken Buttercup. “Usually, Vizzini, he is smart and he makes good plans. But I don’t like this one. I do not like the killing of innocent girls.”

“Who did you fight?” asked Humperdinck. He could see the lump on her head.

“A man in black. Vizzini, he cut the rope but the man did not fall. So I stayed behind and we had a fight. It was a good fight.”

“I could see that,” said Humperdinck, and Iniga grinned. As they spoke the sun finished setting, and as the darkness gathered around Iniga’s eyes began to shine in the moonlight.

“Maybe you should go and find your princess,” she said, shifting against the tree.

“Maybe I should take you with me,” said Humperdinck, “to trade you for the princess.”

“I do not think I would like that,” Iniga answered. She kicked one foot in the dust, so that dirt flew in Humperdinck’s eyes. And with the other foot, she kicked up her sword so that it flew into the air and cut her bonds.

She ran off into the night.


	9. The Giant and the Genius

Humperdinck rode on through the rough country along the Guilder coast. His sharp, falcon eyes saw, even in the night, signs of the people ahead - a small man, a big man, _the love of his life._ Criss-crossing their tracks were the prints of a tall man with the distinctive rope-heeled boots and stride of a pirate, by which I mean, a swagger. (A swagger is a kind of walk where your feet swing forward and your elbows swing out and you hold yourself like you're wearing the _best_ hat in the world, even if your head is bare and the wind ruffles your hair.) Pirates are often the heroes of piratical stories. That is because the stories were made up by pirates.

As the path twisted through rocks and crags like the crooked teeth of a leviathan from the ancient times, Humperdinck found a scene where the pirate had fought with a giant. His eyes passed across rocks smashed into powder, and cracks in the giant boulders where men had smashed at each other. He saw the tracks where a little man had dragged Buttercup away.

He rode and he rode and he rode.

With the dawn, on the top of a small grass-covered hill, Humperdinck and his troop found a small picnic laid out on a white cloth spread over a rock. A small man in an autumn-coloured doublet lay on his side, his face a delicate shade of celadon green that clashed with his clothes.

Humperdinck sniffed the wine in the goblets. “Iocaine powder,” he declared. “I would bet my life upon it.” Iocaine powder, as he well knew, was odourless, tasteless, and completely fatal.

With a great rush of breath, the little man sat up.

“Ha! HA!!” Vizzini cried. (For it was Vizzini.) 

“He thought he had me with the old twice-poisoned goblet faux switcheroo gambit, but I fooled him! I took a miracle pill before I drank! A bezoar from Miracle Minerva of Mayland. I can survive poison; I can survive anything - my brain is mighty! LOOK AT ME! I LIVE!!”

“But you do not, anymore, have the princess in your custody,” observed Humperdinck. His yellow falcon eyes glinted.

“A minor detail!” chortled Vizzini.

“Why did you take Buttercup?” Humperdinck said. “Where are they going?”

“I took her for an intrigue,” Vizzini answered, still chortling with the good humour of one telling himself that he has won. “I took her for an intrigue, and under that is a plan, and under that is a machination so intricate and twisted that no-one will ever understand it.”

Humperdinck cast his sight out over the hills as the little man giggled to himself. In the distance he could see a few bent blades of grass, and a caught red thread that meant Buttercup had gone that way.

Suddenly the laughter stopped. Humperdinck turned and saw his faithful Count Rugen holding Vizzini, supporting the dead man with one six-fingered hand. “He choked on a bezoar,” Count Rugen said, looking concerned. “It… must have come up the wrong… way.”

“There’s no time,” Humperdinck said kindly, lifting himself again into the saddle of his valiant but tired horse. He was worried, because he could tell that they were close to the Fire Swamp, which is very dangerous. They rode on, following the bent blades of grass, the scattering of disturbed pollen, the traces of red.

They sped along, and so it was that soon, across a valley, Humperdinck saw Buttercup being pulled along by a man in black. Her tawny hair was pulled at by the cold wind; her scarlet skirts swirled about her knees.

He saw Buttercup, sudden as a rabbit and fierce as a wolf, push the man in black down the rocky slope.

And he saw Buttercup fall after him.

“NOOOOOOO!!” screamed Humperdinck. 


	10. Swamped 1

[[There was another picture heading this chapter, but somebody ripped it out, so all you can see is some black shading on the rooted edge where the page used to be, and some tangling spiral vines, and one polydactylic foot.]]

 

It took hours before Humperdinck reached the place where Buttercup and the man in black had fallen. He and his troops were riding on horses, which were very fast - except when one is trying to ride around or down or through ravines of broken earth in the green hills. Horses don't like broken ground and they aren't at all good at slopes. In a ravine, someone on foot can outrun someone on a horse six out of ten times.

Humperdinck made a bet with himself that he and his fine horses could run fast enough on the flat that they could make up for losing time going around the ravines. Surely the man in black would veer off from his course quite soon? After all, he and Buttercup were heading directly to the Fire Swamp. They had to turn away. Surely?

Humperdinck bet wrong. They did not turn away.

There are few places on Earth as dangerous as a Fire Swamp. Death Valley in the hottest part of a heat wave will bake you. The tip of the point of a volcano that is throwing burning rock into a bloody sky will sear you. Those are both dangerous places. But the Florin-Guilderian Fire Swamp is also very dark, with ancient hanging vines to strangle, and Lightning Sand to drown you and suffocate you and creep inside your ears, and the Rodents of Unusual Size are pretty scary, too.

[[The Florin-Guilderian Fire Swamp is, was, also home to at least 37 species of frog some of which are now extinct. When I read Mme Vespasian's _floris Insecta: ad infernales luto de Guilderia et Florinia et subductus Daalder_ and followed up with that ep of _Last Chance to See_ I cried. Honestly cried. The Green-Spotted Corrosive Mandrake Toad hasn't been seen in years in any of its old habitats, only two Spitting Fiendlets in view when they used to churn the waterways like curdled milk, the crew had to search for _weeks_ before they caught a fleeting glimpse of the Lesser Frondy Amphisbaena… I just hope all those horrid land developers are thoroughly ashamed of themselves, that's all.

(And may Mme Vespasian and the two camera crew who lost their lives rest in peace and glory, with our fervent thanks for their efforts cataloguing and celebrating rare species.)]]

 

By the time Humperdinck reached the edge of the Fire Swamp, Buttercup had been caught inside it for hours. There were few places that Humperdinck was afraid of, but this was one of them. He had dreamed he died here many times as a child, _strangled by a giant rodent's six-clawed paw._ He stared at the dark trees and the mud, where not even he could track someone, and he knew he had met his doom.

The Count beside him stared also. “The man in black must be very desperate, or very frightened, or very stupid, or very brave.” 

“Very all four I should think,” Humperdinck replied, as a portion of the dark swamp lit up suddenly in unexpected conflagration. “She did not die in there,” he said suddenly. He put aside everything else. Nothing else could happen, except that Buttercup lived. “We will ride around, and meet them on the other side.” His horses were weary but some of them still could run. He looked with concern at Rugen's horse, its head drooping and its sides heaving.

“We’ll follow as best we can,” the Count said. His gloved hands flexed on red reins bright like narrow streaks of blood. “It shouldn't be a problem. ”


	11. Swamped 2

[[I'm sorry, but there are some scary things in this chapter. I can't clip _everything,_ you know?]]

 

Later Buttercup would speak of her travels through the Fire Swamp. “Oh, these things happen,” she said airily. “I wish I’d had walking boots and a sturdy pair of trousers. My dress set on fire! How shocking! And my hair was scorched, oh dear. Such strange beasts in the darkness and the eeriness of their noises, of course I was afraid but I had someone with me and we found our way to daylight in the end.”

Many years after that she would tell her daughter, “I had been taken, and bound, and blindfolded. All my wits had come to nothing and my fate was decided by strangers. And now I was being pulled through the most dangerous place in creation by a strange, fierce man whom I hardly knew.

“Once I fell into the Lightning Sand. It was the finest of dust, going down forever without ending. I fell and fell with my arms stretched out, and the powder crept inside my ears and my nostrils and the cracks of my eyelids. I wanted to scream but I knew that if I opened my mouth the dust would come down my throat. The man in black had promised he would always come for me and I held onto that when there was nothing else, and when something brushed my hand I grasped it frantically. But what I held was only the bare bony wrist of someone who had died before me. And I fell. Yes, I was frightened.”

All of us, every one, come to something like the Fire Swamp some time in our lives. Whether we go around, or through, we will meet it.

 

[[Bring on the sudden swerve!]]

 

**

 

Many years ago, in the high, dry hills in the middle of Spain, in a village hidden behind the great sword-making city of Toledo, lived a skinny little girl. She was dark-haired and long-legged and her feet were always dirty. Her nose was too big for her face, too sharp. She lived on air and pride, and the love of her father.

Her name was Iniga.

One day Iniga was perched in high rocks watching the dusty road wind down around the hills. His face and hair were hidden from her sight by a large Aragonese shepherd cap, but she saw his hand on his walking stick.

“Gosh,” she thought to herself. “He has six fingers on his hand, and I only have five. Is that normal? Father has five fingers, also. Maybe it is that people in my village have five and people outside have six, or maybe it is like hair colour, which can be black or red or the pale tawny of autumn wheat, as it wills.” Her world became a little wider, that day, thinking about it. She was still counting and recounting her fingers and toes when the man disappeared around a bend.

She did not worry that she did not know the man - her father, Domingo, had visitors sometimes, for when it came to swordsmithing he was a genius beyond all the skill of Toledo. He was very grumpy about it, but people still came and asked him to make them swords that move like lightning and cut like the crescent moon.

She did not think much of it, when she came home that night to find her father both furious and inspired. People who asked him to make things annoyed him, but he did it anyway. Geniuses are like that, sometimes.

 

**

 

A year later, Iniga was running through the high, dry grass of the hills around her home. The sun was setting, and her shadow stretched out long and dark before her. She ran to catch it, the long stretched-out woman that the shadow made, but it always ran faster.

Iniga saw below her, on the road, the six-fingered man again, carrying a cane and wearing his shepherd's cap like a costume. He had a sword at his hip. It was the bright hilt of the special sword that her father had made, and the low sun struck sparks of light off it. The six-fingered man walked slowly, easily, following also his shadow. And dark shadows, little splotches, trailed after him on the dirt road.

So Iniga ran home over the grass to her little house, for her father would have been paid, and with that they could buy food and it was nice to eat more than air sometimes.

But her little father was dead. Domingo lay in his doorway, with a terrible wound in his stomach and a pool of red blood around him. His eyes opened when he heard Iniga, and he smiled a little. 

Domingo’s lips moved. "Careful in the tempering,” he said, and died.

Young Iniga began to think very coldly and very clearly. The six-fingered man had walked away with her father's best sword, and she could see that their money box had as much inside it as this morning, which is to say, nothing.  The six-fingered man must have tried to cheat her father of the price of his sword. Domingo, whose pride stood taller than a thunderhead, would have told him, “No.” And he had died.

Quick as lightning, Iniga snatched up another of her father's swords and loped down the road following the footprints in her father's blood. It was a good sword, and she was almost tall enough for it. She ran and she ran, and when she found the six-fingered man she rushed around and blocked his path.

“Hold!” she cried. “I am Iniga Montoya, daughter of Domingo Montoya, the best swordsmith in all of Spain. You killed my father. Prepare to meet your doom.”

“Wordy little thing, aren't you?” the six-fingered man said lazily. “Oh, very well, we'll fight. I haven't had much exercise today.”

And they fought, in the dust of the road, as the setting sun threw orange light around them. Iniga could not see her opponent's face clearly, because of the light and because of the water in her eyes, but she could fight.  She was tall for her age, and strong. Already she could best three average men in a sparring match, weaving steel supple as a willow branch around them. But the six-fingered man… he was very good. Very, very good. Even so, his eyes widened when a tall skinny girl with a nose like the point of a boat drove him back for a little and a little. But he won  _as he was always going to win._ After he had struck Iniga's sword out of her hand he sliced one of her cheeks open. Then, casually, he cut the other so that they matched.

And slowly, consideringly, he lifted his sword and pointed it at the heart of the bloody, furious, grieving girl. He lunged! But the sword twisted in his hand! “Oh, how annoying!” he exclaimed. Iniga did not answer. The man tried to cut the girl's head off with a backhanded strike but the hilt turned under his six fingers and hit her with the flat instead, so that she staggered. “I thought I bought a _good_ sword,” he said in exasperation. Iniga snarled at him wordlessly. He flung the sword away as a broken tool, and knocked her down instead.

It was a long time later that Iniga woke up alone in the road. The sword was lying nearby, shining very bright under the moon and the stars. Her bloody cheeks burned.

She coughed a little. Her throat was very dry. “This I swear,” she told the night sky, “I swear that I will take up the sword, and I will travel the roads, and _I will not rest until the man who killed my father is dead._ The most dangerous places in creation, they will be my home if I find him. The fiercest monster, it will be my friend if it help me kill him. _This I swear.”_ She shut her eyes, and when she opened them the moon and stars shone inside.

 

**

 

Now, Iniga ran along the top of the Cliffs of Insanity. It had been many years and she had fallen in with bandits and thieves. Working for bandits and thieves paid Iniga's bills, and she got a lot of practice with the sword; also, the six-fingered man was very bad, so she thought that mingling with bad people might help her find him. But she had not. And she did not know any _good_ people now, either.

She had lost a fight with the man in black, which was a shock. And she could find neither her friend Fezzik, nor Vizzini who gave them orders. For all Iniga's skills, she had no gift for strategy.

She was lost.


	12. Swamped 3

On the other side of the Fire Swamp, Humperdinck felt the salt wind of the sea blow on the back of his neck. He and his troop had picked their way along wet beaches caught between rocky cliffs and the sea waves, all the seaspray shining bright. His horse Caballa, valiant though her heart was, was very tired, slick with sweat and dragging one foot. The other riders trailed along behind him like beads from a broken necklace. 

Humperdinck waited for the others to catch up, and as he waited he smoothed his horse's mane and told Caballa she was a good girl. He checked her feet, and found a small pebble in one hoof, which he took out. Caballa chewed on his hair when he bent his head, and sniffed his ear. She was a horse: horses do that.

A cluster of trees like twisted mangroves grew feebly between the beach and the darkness of the Fire Swamp, stinking of rotten eggs. When Count Rugen and the others had caught up, Humperdinck led them inside.

Very soon, they heard voices!

One of them was Buttercup!

“But,” she was saying, “if for five years you haven't been dead, or a prisoner, but instead a valet on the pirate ship Revenge, why did you not tell me you were alive?”

“I wrote you letters!” said the man in black. “Twelve of them!”

 

[[I'll spare you Mme Holyoake's satire against the postal service. It's in every Florinese language textbook I have and I am so. done. with “Against the Mail Clerk and the Scrivener, and Their Little Schnauzers Also”. Sure it's funny. I don't care. Look it up if you want, I'm done.]]

 

Moving very quickly, Humperdinck lifted his crossbow and pointed it at the man in black's heart. His voice was soft and stern. “You will release the princess at once,” he said.

The man in black swiftly drew the sword at his hip, where it shone bright in the sunlight. “Death first!” he cried.

Humperdinck looked carefully at Buttercup, where she hovered at the the man in black’s shoulder. She was ragged and filthy, but unbowed, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed red. Humperdinck lifted one hand and his troop rode around all of them in a circle, so no-one could run away. He did not want to risk the pirate killing Buttercup in a fight, and he was worried if he fired that she would be hurt by the crossbow bolt. He said again, “You will release the princess.”

The man in black's eyes flashed like fire, and he shifted his feet into a fighting stance.

It didn't look good.

“Will you promise not to hurt him?!”

“What?” said Prince Humperdinck. 

“What?” said Count Rugen.

“What!?” cried the man in black.

“If I come with you,” Princess Buttercup said to Humperdinck, furious and passionate, “will you promise not to hurt him and return him to his ship, the Revenge?”

Humperdinck lowered his crossbow. Hand on his heart, he said, _“I swear.”_

It was then that Humperdinck did a bad thing. He had a good reason and a bad reason.

The good reason was this: pirates, when they are not making up fancy stories about themselves, spend a lot of time stealing things, burning things, and killing people. Also, they lie a lot. One of Humperdinck’s jobs was to protect the coastline _from_ pirates, and he did not trust them at all. The sensible thing to do was to lock the pirate up and try him for his crimes. Or at least, to stop him from going back to the ship Revenge to burn down another town. It was a pretty good reason.

The bad reason was that Buttercup stood straighter beside the man in black. Her cheeks flushed pink like cherry blossom and her eyes brightened; her hand strayed towards his hand. She looked at him like a woman in love, as she had never looked at Humperdinck. Humperdinck’s heart had long been broken, a handful of splintered glass shards catching at brightness, making him bleed. And every sharp splinter of his heart hated the pirate. He had sworn not to kill the man but he could keep him imprisoned until Buttercup was safely married. Couldn't he?

Bad reasons sneak up on us.

As Buttercup walked towards Humperdinck's horse in her torn crimson dress, Humperdinck whispered in Count Rugen's ear, “Lock him away. Bury him in darkness until even his name shall be forgotten.”

Count Rugen smiled. “That shouldn't be a problem.

And then Buttercup was in Humperdinck's arms, ragged and weary and _alive,_ and all the prince could think about was her breathing in his arms. He rode away with her, and did not hear the conversation between Count Rugen and the man in black.

“We are men of action,” said the man in black, “and lies do not become us.”

“Indeed not,” said Count Rugen. He lifted his sword, ready to strike.

Just then, the man in black tilted his head, curious. “Your hand has six fingers.”

Rugen shrugged. He hit the man in black on the head, and darkness was all the pirate knew for a long time.


	13. What The Giant Did

[[Oh. My. God.

See, the first time I read this there was all the stuff with the kidnapping and the Fire Swamp - lots of buckles swashed, you feel me? - and then Part 2 veers off into the life of the court preparing for the wedding, and there are parties and intrigue between people I had never seen before and bonus comical menials and I think, looking back, it was only the exams I mentioned earlier that kept me from ripping my eyes out and screaming, “Bring back the Rodents of Unusual Size!!” Then I skipped a couple, maybe three chapters, and, uh, well you know.

Except all this translating has given my High Florinese a serious workout and suddenly I'm getting the jokes which is important because. This stuff is frickin’ hilarious. Plus the dramatic counterpoint between Lady Girasol's romantic woes and Flossie the Maid and _will she ever get her sandwich?_ and also the Blue Knight. And there's, like, themes and recurring motifs between this and the main story. Truly I am in the presence of a master. And any remarks that Mme Holyoake was just padding her word count while she worked out what happened next with Buttercup are _clearly_ sore feelings from Morgenstern fans annoyed that he couldn't write court intrigue to save his bloody life. Heh.

Aaaaanyway, when I'm done with the main story I'm totally coming back and doing the court festivity arc properly. I solemnly swear.]]

 

Fezzik was a big man, and a careful man. Like the thoughts that dwelled in the heart of a mountain he moved slowly and surely.

Fezzik had fought the man in black among a tumble of rocks, and he had lost. He dreamed of a tall woman with kind eyes and a bosom like the figurehead of a stately ship. She was telling him that they would meet soon and he would never be alone again. And she smiled and hugged him. Her name was Re- Re- Re-

Fezzik opened his eyes. There was a sheep curled up against his side, its thick wool plush like a cushion. Fezzik blinked at it; it licked his face. He smiled and patted the sheep, then stretched and carefully stood up, brushing bits of dirt and grass off his rough clothes. He was alone, except for the sheep, and he hated that. Or more properly, being alone frightened him.

Vizzini used to tell him, “When you get lost, go back to the beginning.” So Fezzik thought, slowly and carefully, about where this job had started, which was in the Thieves Forest, in Florin, and he decided to go there. 

But his journey was interrupted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // _and then Part 2 veers off into the life of the court_ \- this section might have something to do with my first experience with _The Count of Monte Cristo_ unabridged. There are thriving herds of characters that tend not to make it to the adaptations, nested stories in stories in stories, and Eugenie Danglars running off with her singing teacher (“Oh, I'm just fine wearing pants. Just put the same surname down on the fake passports. I'll pretend to be her *brother*. All very platonic...” )


	14. What The Princess Said

In the days after her rescue, Princess Buttercup had performed all the rites and duties of a bride-to-be with the perfection of a finely-crafted watch. She attended the diplomatic receptions, she visited all of Humperdinck's cousins, she gave alms and washed the feet of beggars on the appointed days. Yes, she was a beautiful princess: beautiful and dutiful, and her heart ticked along like an unthinking machine. 

But one night, only a handful of days before her wedding, something sprang loose inside her. Pleading illness, she stayed away from the Court arrayed in glory, and went up to her room. But instead of laying down on the brocade counterpane of her enormous bed, she took off her delicate tiara and silken raiment and put on her old clothes - a homespun kirtle and a gown of faded rose-madder, dyed with her own hands.

Buttercup took the obscure ways, the narrow halls and winding stairs where the servants worked, and found her way down and down, to a great kitchen all hot and muggy with the food to be eaten that night, boisterous and raucous with busy cooks. No-one recognised her, not without the crown and the silk. She took a deep breath and dived through the crowd, until she reached open doors and slipped out into the cool of the evening.

She did not know where she walked after that, picking the streets at random and passing unknown among crowds celebrating (not her, for once) one of the holidays that marked the turning of the year. 

It was the Feast of Saint Osgyth, and she came near a procession in the saint's honour, a long line of young women in dark cloaks following a tame white stag led by a silver halter. Their hair trailed in braids down their shoulders and they chanted softly, _Put me in the fire, I shall not burn; put me in the water, I shall not drown. Put me in the fire, I shall…_ As she came closer, one of the women's garments flickered into light at the edges, brighter than bullion-gold embroidery. Her cloak was on fire! Buttercup knew the woman must be wearing a Holocaust Cloak and the flames would not spread far, and if they did spread she would not be harmed. It was only a little miracle that let the woman burn, and live, the kind that was bought and sold at the market... but even so she hid her face as the women came close, and peeked between her fingers as they passed wrapped in the darkness, their faces calm and intent, and the fire and faith tucked inside them.

She saw Fezzik watching her across the clearing and gave a little scream. Then she felt bad about it. The giant had helped kidnap her. But she had liked him. But he had still tried to kidnap her! It was complicated. 

She softened, and beckoned the large man over. His craggy face brightened as he smiled, and his large hand cupped over her head for warmth.

Buttercup smiled back. “Are you well?” she asked Fezzik.

He stopped smiling. “I've lost Iniga,” he said sadly.

“I haven't seen her?” Buttercup hazarded.

Fezzik smiled again. “You have a gift for rhyme.”

“Heh. Some of the time,” Buttercup said wryly.

“And you,” Fezzik asked, “Are you well?”

“Oh, I'm marrying a man I don't love,” said Buttercup airily, “while the love of my life returns to sailing the high seas. I'm wonderful!” She looked into Fezzik’s confused eyes. “Well, you see. It's. I can sum up?” Then she caught herself. “No, it is too much: I will explain.”

And she began a long story, in the privacy of the night and the crowds. Part of this you already know, how she fell in love with a farmboy named Westley, who went off to seek his fortune only to be captured by the Dread Pirate Roberts, who never takes prisoners. And she spoke of her coming marriage, to a man who promised kindness, and duty, and friendship. “I made a solemn vow to marry him,” she explained. “It's bad to break those!” And then she talked about the kidnapping, where she was rescued from Vizzini by a man in black.

Have you guessed, gentle reader? The man in black _was_ Westley!

“The Dread Pirate Roberts never takes prisoners, but sometimes he takes crew!” Buttercup explained. “Westley worked very hard as a sailor, always under the threat of death in the morning if he did not do a good job. And he did do a good job - so good that he worked his way up to First Mate, and then, when Roberts retired, became the Dread Pirate himself!”

Fezzik nodded uncertainly. He felt the story would make more sense if there were hats in it, but Buttercup was still talking.

“I almost ran away with Westley,” Buttercup said sadly. “But then Prince Humperdinck arrived. So I remembered my duty, and my promise. And I remembered that when pirates are caught in Florin or Guilder, they are hung by the neck until they are dead.”

“Ah,” said Fezzik. He gently patted her head and she sighed and touched his wrist.

“So I made the choice to stay, for duty and to protect the man I loved.”

She looked out into the night, to the maidens of the town passing in lines to the shrine of Saint Osgyth, while an iron bell tolled.

“I chose for Love's sake,” she said, “But it still feels like I tore Love down and trampled it in the gutter.” She swallowed hard so that she did not cry, and Fezzik waited silently until she was done screwing up her face and breathing short, quick little breaths, and trying to be brave.

At last she said, pretending to be cheerful, “And what about you, Fezzik? Are you going home?”

Fezzik shook his great head slowly. “I am going to the Thieves’ Forest.”

“Oh, no!” Buttercup exclaimed. “You can't go back to a life of crime! I'll get you a job on the Brute Squad!”

 

[[“The Brute Squad” was the nickname for a Florin City-based force comprising roughly thirty men and women, all rather large hence their nickname, also known as the Lucky 33rd. Technically military, most of their citations for valour involve relief efforts such as bolstering dams and dousing warehouse fires. The unit was nearly wiped out in the Great Fire of 1637/1701/1636a, and the survivors were folded into the Municipal Fire Service where they served with honour.

What? I read.]]

 

Fezzik nodded. It was a kind gesture of the Princess’s, especially considering his part in her kidnapping and all that, and it would give him a steady job while he looked for Iniga. As the swordswoman often said, “Sometimes you just have to pay the bills.”

Buttercup took his hand with both of hers and smiled, happy for the first time in many days.

She did not know, that hidden in the night and the crowds, a man with a huntsman's cloak and eyes like a falcon watched her...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // St Osgyth is a relatively minor English saint. I picked her as Florin's patron saint because, like St Valerie, she was beheaded and is sometimes depicted carrying it (keeping the matchy-matchy theme Florin and Guilder have going on).
> 
> Wikipedia says her bones were dug up in the 15th century and reburied somewhere anonymous. Clearly this was when Florin obtained its big relic and worked up its own collection of lore. “...According to the curious 17th-century antiquary John Aubrey (author of the Brief Lives), "in those days, when they went to bed they did rake up the fire, and make a X on the ashes, and pray to God and Saint Sythe (Saint Osgyth) to deliver them from fire, and from water, and from all misadventure."
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osgyth


	15. What the Pirate Knew

Westley opened his eyes in the dark. It was stone, the room he was in, and he lay on a hard wooden surface. For a long time, he rested there, and dreamed. He dreamed of his days with Buttercup, a girl with hair like winter wheat and a dancing way about her. He dreamed of the hard labour in the high hills of her home.

Westley had been an orphan. And though the elderly great-uncle who had raised him had not been unkind, he had little space in his life for a tow-headed boy who ate enough for three - even if he worked enough for six. Neither regretted the day when Westley set off with his few possessions over his shoulder, seeking a job among the little farms that perched in the high, hard hills. The work was hard there, and the wages a pittance. But Westley did not care, for it was there that he first knew love.

Buttercup was only a small-holder’s daughter, but you wouldn’t know it. She kept her back straight and her nose high, haughty as she thought a queen might be. She took great pleasure in ordering him about! But she kept back the best apples from the barrel, that he might eat one when he came in from a long day herding the cows with mud on his boots, and every time she mended his shirts she embroidered a little flower when she was done without really thinking about it, in the same colour thread so you could hardly notice it. As the days wore on, and Westley’s clothes wore through and tore themselves, they became a quiet garden of flowers, _Buttercup, Buttercup, Buttercup…_ All her name was written on him, and in him. _Buttercup…_

“Thank you,” he told her once, touching gently the flower set over his heart.

“Whatever for?” she asked blankly. Then, “Boy! Polish my saddle at once! I want to see my face in it by morning!”

Westley smiled. He did not know how to tell he loved her. “As you wish,” he said instead.

Suddenly, the door swung open! Westley blinked hard, blinded by the swift light. He tried to rise but he was weak as a new-born kitten, clumsy and helpless on the table he was bound to, as a short, plump man with the ice-white colouring of West Florin bustled inside with a tray full of jars and cloths, and a bowl of steaming water.

“Room 61, is it?” he said. “Sorry I’m late, I was feeding the amphisbaena. I’m the Burgoo Man. You can call me Burgoo, that’s fine.”

And he began to dab at Westley’s wounds with a damp cloth, tsking when the pirate tried to roll away.

“Now, now, none o’ that, 61, I’m here to get you well,” said Burgoo. “Himself wants you in fine fettle before any o’ the, well, the experiments start. Just rest up, my lad.”

“My name is Westley,” said Westley suddenly.

“Nah,” Burgoo said kindly, “you're Room 61. Best not go thinking you're _people.”_ And he dabbed again at the pirate’s burns, and smoothed cool ointment onto his abrasions. 

“Please,” said Westley.

Burgoo leaned over in a rustle of his burlap apron and patted Westley on the unburned shoulder, quite gently. He gathered up his pots and cloths onto the tray, and shut the door behind him.

In the darkness, the man in the cell said, “My name is Westley, and I love Buttercup.”

The darkness did not answer. 

He touched the place over his heart, and dreamed.  


**Author's Note:**

> I'll be honest, I love getting comments, even if it's "What were you smoking when you wrote this chapter?" It's nice to know people are reading.


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